By Danny Zeegers with Jessica Eisenberg (N2W) & Caroline Verellen (IBM Storage)
The Hidden Danger in “Immutable”
One of the most celebrated concepts in modern cyber resilience under NIS2, DORA, and OT security frameworks is the immutable backup. Together with Jessica Eisenberg LINK , backup expert from N2WS, and Caroline Verellen, IBM storage strategist, we explored this pillar in recent NIS2.news podcasts—and the insights were both inspiring and alarming.
While organizations are proudly adopting 24 TB IBM Flash storage arrays and air-gapped backup solutions, the silent threat remains: malware in stealth mode embedded in the backup payload.
An immutable backup cannot be changed—but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t infected before it was written.
Reliability Means Discovery, Not Just Immutability
Jessica Eisenberg emphasizes:
“Immutability is essential, but without continuous malware detection, it’s just a frozen time capsule of potential disaster.”
Caroline Verellen adds:
“IBM’s high-performance storage is only part of the equation. Without proactive discovery, you’re storing threats at lightning speed.”
This is why a backup strategy is only as strong as its malware detection. IBM and N2WS recommend integrating malware scanning before, during, and after backup windows.
Smart Partnerships: Backup + Inspection
Vendors like Orange Cyberdefense actively promote a balanced strategy: pairing powerful backup tools with deep content inspection and sandboxing.
Why? Because even if ransomware is encrypted in transit and invisible in runtime, it activates post-restore—only then do its payloads trigger, often under MITRE techniques.
Top 5 Malware Inspection Tools (2025 Snapshot)
- ESET Inspect – NATO-trusted, behavioral engine + endpoint telemetry
- CrowdStrike Falcon – Runtime inspection + ThreatGraph analytics
- Microsoft Defender for Endpoint – Broad business compatibility
- SentinelOne Singularity XDR – AI-led lateral movement detection
- VMRay – Hypervisor-level sandboxing with malware detonation
ESET, being the supplier to NATO, deserves special mention for their proactive approach to supply chain hardening and forensic inspection across hybrid infrastructures.
The only way to have a SOC TIER 4 NIS
SIEM/XDR Platforms Frequently essential protection is the approach of Orange Cyberdefense Using
- Microsoft Sentinel – often promoted for Microsoft-native environments.
- Elastic Security – for scalable and customizable SIEM pipelines.
- Splunk Enterprise Security – known for high-end, large-scale telemetry environments.
– IBM QRadar – while not their exclusive choice, is sometimes seen in their managed SIEM services.
2. MITRE ATT&CK Mapping & Threat Intelligence
Orange Cyberdefense emphasizes:
- Threat detection frameworks aligned with MITRE ATT&CK
- Use of custom parsers, detection rules, and threat hunting integrations across vendor platforms.
3. XDR Integrations & EDR Feeds
They often integrate:
- CrowdStrike, and SentinelOne
- With telemetry routed into managed SIEMs or MDR/XDR environments for:
- Lateral movement detection
- Enriched threat intelligence correlation
- Behavior-based alerting
Quantum + Dark AI = Backup’s Existential Threat
From 2026 onwards, Quantum computing + darkside AI will escalate the threat landscape. Quantum’s potential to break encryption combined with AI-designed evasion techniques will render legacy backup detection obsolete.
The only path forward? Quantum-ready anomaly detection embedded into backup pipelines.
What If Your Backup Is Still Rotten?
Even after good policy and tool investment, if a backup executes a payload post-restore, you need detection at execution level.
Tools like IBM QRadar XDR integrated with micro-OS environments can simulate, record, and visualize payload behavior in MITRE ATT&CK format, offering clarity in the fog of post-incident chaos.
DRP: Real-Life Tested or Paperweight?
An excellent Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) doesn’t live in a drawer. It must:
- Define clear RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective)
- Be tested in live, adversarial simulations
- Align with business SLAs and critical service thresholds
Because if your DRP isn’t battle-tested, your business continuity is an illusion.
Conclusion: Prevention is Cheaper than Cure
Immutability is a cornerstone—but reliability requires inspection, adaptation, and future-facing defenses.
As Jessica, Caroline, and the NIS2.news community highlight:
“Don’t just protect data. Protect outcomes.”
Stay safe. Stay resilient. Stay inspected.
Case Snapshot: BlackShield MSP – The Wake-Up Call
BlackShield (a fictive company), a mid-sized managed service provider in Luxembourg, proudly served several EU-regulated fintech platforms under DORA-aligned SLAs—including real-time processing for instant payment gateways. Their backup environment boasted immutable snapshots, flash-tier IBM storage, and daily offsite replication.
Confident? Absolutely. Compliant? On paper, yes. Prepared? Not quite.
03:47 AM – The Nightmare Begins
An alert from a fintech customer’s endpoint flagged anomalous transaction replay attempts. BlackShield initiated their Disaster Recovery Plan and restored clean systems from a 48-hour-old immutable backup.
But something wasn’t right.
Within minutes of recovery, strange scheduled tasks began executing, firewall rules were quietly altered, and command-and-control traffic reemerged. The same malware had survived — sleeping silently inside what they trusted most: the backup.
Forensics Uncovered
- The malware had embedded itself as a dormant loader, bypassing basic AV scans.
- No inline scanning or behavioral analysis had ever been applied before or after backup creation.
- DRP tests had been simulations, not reality-based. RTO/RPO looked good in dashboards, but in practice? Chaos.
The Aftermath
- SLA penalties triggered: €2.7M in cumulative fines
- NCA (National Competent Authority) under DORA opened an investigation
- Multiple customers questioned contractual continuity
- BlackShield’s ISO 27001 and DORA controls were found to be “checkbox-deep”
Lesson Learned
In a public debrief, BlackShield’s CISO admitted:
“We had the immutability. What we lacked was reliability. No AI-powered malware discovery, no post-restore behavior analytics, and no quantum readiness. We backed up the breach, not just the data.”
The CEO tought the ISO 27001 certification would do the magic , but not every compliance is NIS2 TIER 4 compliant.
To achieve NIS2 Cyfun Essential TIER 4 assurance, a risk assessment of the backup system must be conducted in alignment with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 (CSF)—particularly under the “Protect”, “Detect”, and “Recover” functions—and further informed by best practices from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). The assessment must evaluate not only the integrity, immutability, and recoverability of backups, but also their resilience to advanced persistent threats, stealth malware, and post-compromise exploitation. Drawing from DoD insights, this includes adopting a Zero Trust mindset, enforcing multiple layers of validation (e.g., malware inspection, behavioral analytics), and using classified-tier backup enclaves that isolate backup data from production breach paths.
The organization must document how backup processes are governed, how RTO/RPO align with mission-critical SLA thresholds, and how pre- and post-backup malware scanning is implemented. DoD-aligned principles also emphasize live-fire recovery drills, quantum-resilient encryption standards, and telemetry integration with threat intelligence and incident response tooling. Tools that map to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, such as QRadar, VMRay, or CrowdStrike, should be used to simulate and detect post-restore payload execution patterns.
Incorporating these multi-layered defenses ensures backup systems do more than retain data—they become a strategic, high-assurance resilience layer, capable of withstanding next-generation threats and fulfilling the highest expectations of NIS2 Tier 4 maturity.
This fictional cautionary tale mirrors a growing reality: resilience isn’t just storage—it’s strategy, inspection, and response.
DANNY ZEEGERS – Lead Auditor and NIS2 Expert Qfirst
